Vocal Voices

Which? magazine is launching a 'super-complaint' with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on behalf of us customers. It claims that the supermarkets deliberately use different pricing schemes, make misleading, or not so special, special offers and reduce unit sizes without reducing the price.

It is about time this action was done and good luck to Which?. It has been going on for years and unless you are a savvy shopper or one with the time and, importantly, the ability to compare you are going to get fleeced.

Some of the things I see on a regular basis do my head in. "Special Offer" screams the pennant "2 for £3" - that's two 500g trays of x pre-wrapped with the special offer sticker; yet down the aisle the same 500g packs are £1.39 each. I also see things like the same product by different manufacturers, usually the own brand and market leader, where one is shown priced as £2.75 per 100g and the other at £23.75 per kg. When these are sold at the same unit price the buyer is getting less of one than the other. Then there are the packs of x number of, say, tomatoes or onions, prominently displayed. However, if you weigh them then go to the loose alternatives you can get the same weight for two thirds the price.

I am lucky. I have loads of time and can compare, but those not in my situation, and there are millions, are being robbed blind.

Me too WM I go round all our local shops and compare like for like and all the offers.

I also have the time to make these comparisons. I also often bulk buy when they do a silly giveaway price on items sich as soaps liquid/powder hand etc and will buy say 20 handwash creams in the pump dispensers,or recently was tinned salmon half price so I bought 30 tins that will last us best part of a year as will the soaps stuffs.

One of my peeves is the sell by area of foods to sell that day....I have seen mince on offer here @£4 a pack buy 3 for £10= £3.33 each in the reduced section with 50p off so costing £3.50 a pack therefore 27 p dearer than buying 3 packs of fresh mince. Yesterday in the Coop Pepsi 6 cans ware £2.00.....some damaged in the reduced shelf 5 cans not the 6 were £2.95, how do they work that one out then?? 95p dearer to buy 5 than 6 lol
The list is endless Tesco on wednesday Special offer £1..............original price in small print ...........£1 ?????????????????

Manxie xx (bemused)

Workingman wrote:I am lucky. I have loads of time and can compare, but those not in my situation, and there are millions, are being robbed blind.

Admittedly Frank there are people who struggle and not, it's not fair on them.... but most should be able to do simple mathematics and know that 2.75 per 100gr is the same as 27.50 per kg so more expensive that the other option. There are times I can't blame supermarkets for abusing the stupidity / laziness of some.

I work full time and try spend as little time to do my shopping as possible, but even I will always compare the per unit price on nearly everything I buy

manxie wrote:The list is endless Tesco on wednesday Special offer £1..............original price in small print ...........£1 ?????????????????

Manxie xx (bemused)

what's the saying? A fool and his money are soon parted

About time too and more power to "Which"'s elbow! The supermarkets are using every trick in the book to edge prices up, but like Manxie I bulk-buy when things are cheap. We only tend to buy named brands rather than store own-brands due to quality, so I oscillate between (in the case of canned soups) Heinz, Crosse & Blackwell and Baxters, whichever's got the promotion on, and buy 10 or a dozen at a time. Same as Manxie says with cleaning things like Domestos sprays. However we can afford to do that - many can't.

And their petrol prices are creeping up as well, penny a litre at a time ....

Sorry Ria, I did not explain the price per 100g v per kilo properly.

Those prices are usually in very small print on the shelf stock label. The headline price will be in huge print on the item label or the shelf banner, and sometimes it is the same per pack, but with packs of different weights from the supermarket and a branded product.

Off tack slightly, but this made me smile. I was making pizzas the other day and needed pepperoni, so off to Asda I go. Now Asda do a range of cooked meats at about the £1.60 mark or 2 for £3, and pepperoni is one of those meats. Into the basket go two packs, but then I spot pepperoni with £1 stickers on - same brand, same size. When I asked about it at the till as I did not want to pay £3 for my two £1 packs I was told not to worry as they had different codes.

We invested in Costco membership way back when Mrs S was shopping at home. She would go round all the supermarkets and take the average prices of brand goods. Then she would head to Costco and bulk buy six months worth of cleaning and toiletry supplies if the prices (add VAT or get a surprise), were better. Dog and Cat food was a real winner at less than half price all the time.

However for many things she would take the 2 for the price of one when they came up as they were cheaper. Coffee was a regular.

What she also did was take a record of the prices she bought at and the prices 6 months later when she went back for a top up. She noticed the difference was often visible and led to a real saving doing 6 month shops. We were looking at the viability of doing 1 year shops when we headed off to France.

I often see those offers where the "cheap" stuff is more expensive than the "expensive" stuff on the shelves next to them. I just ignore them but I do wonder who picks them up without looking any closer. There has to be an element of personal responsibility in shopping at value prices. All sales outlets use size, colour and lurid headlines to mislead people. The DM is becoming world class at it, chasing close behind Fox News.....

The less we expect of people, the less they will live up to our expectations. We should be making sharper shoppers. If the supermarkets "offers" sit on the shelves they'll soon stop it. The government can't be everywhere. Shoppers can....

Sometimes it can be difficult to work out the price per unit. for example the bananas in Morrisons - the pre-packed small bananas were priced at 16p per unit, whereas the other loose, fair trade ones were priced per kilo. Not simple to work out.......

Special offer in Waitrogues here, a pack of three filters for £9 or six for £22. I bought two packs of three.

Poundland upping the ante too. Used to be five packs of Quavers for £1 now only four. 25% increase.

Ped, 3 for £9 versus 6 for £22 is a special offer. Well it is if the normal price, week in, week out, is 6 for £22.